In recent years, a movement has gained traction to replace incandescent light bulbs with lighting fixtures that employ more efficient lighting technologies. One such technology that shows tremendous promise employs light emitting diodes (LEDs). Compared with incandescent bulbs, LED-based light fixtures are much more efficient at converting electrical energy into light and are longer lasting, and as a result, lighting fixtures that employ LED technologies are expected to replace incandescent bulbs in residential, commercial, and industrial applications.
Unlike incandescent bulbs that operate by subjecting a filament to a desired current, LED-based lighting fixtures require control electronics to drive one or more LEDs. The control electronics includes a power supply and circuitry to provide the pulse streams or other signals that are required to drive the one or more LEDs in a desired fashion. While much more efficient than incandescent bulbs, the control electronics and the LEDs of the lighting fixture will emit a certain amount of heat, which should be efficiently dissipated to avoid damaging or reducing the operating life of the control electronics or the LEDs.
Since the control electronics and the LEDs of an LED-based lighting fixture are often mounted in such a way to allow the LED-based lighting fixture to replace either an incandescent light bulb or a lighting fixture that is compatible with an incandescent bulb, the control electronics and LEDs are often mounted in a location that is not conducive for heat dissipation. As such, there is a need to efficiently and effectively dissipate heat that is generated by the control electronics, the LEDs, or a combination thereof in LED-based lighting fixtures as well as other types of lighting fixtures that are faced with similar heat dissipation needs.